Nevermind the Truckers, Bettye LaVette is driving

You know this is going to be good: Soul veteran Bettye LaVette returns Sept. 25 with a new album, "The Scene of the Crime," the follow-up to 2005's "I've Got My Own Hell to Raise." Even better, her backing band is the Drive-By Truckers, and head Trucker Patterson Hood co-produced the record with DBT collaborator David Barbe and LaVette.

Making the record, LaVette's at FAME Studio in Muscle Shoals, Ala., (where Hood's father, David Hood, was the session bassist) wasn't always an easy task, the younger Hood writes on the Anti- Records website, but it certainly was rewarding.

"Much great art has been made through high pressure and tension, and this one certainly fits the bill," Hood notes.

We get just a taste for now with the track posted below, but it won't be enough, if what Hood says about LaVette's version of "Talking Old Soldiers" is even close to the truth: "To call it one of the most profound performances in the history of soul music is an understatement," he writes. "In twenty-two years of playing in bands and a lifetime of being obsessed with music and art, I’ve never heard anything like it."